2016 Presidential Candidate Profile

Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig has spent the last 6 years as a professor at the Harvard School of Law. Previously he was a distinguished professor at the Stanford Law School and the University of Chicago Law School. He is known for his expertise on the legal field dealing with internet freedom, net neutrality and copyright restrictions, Lessig was a founding board member of Creative Commons. In 2014, Lessig was featured in an award winning documentary KillSwitch, where he favorably narrated the stories of two hackers: Edward Snowden and Aaron Swartz. He also founded an organization called Rootstrikers to grow a grassroots movement in favor of campaign finance reform. Highly educated, Lessig has a degree from the University of Pennsylvania, a Masters degree from Cambridge, and a law degree from Yale. After graduation, Lessig clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Lessig launched his campaign on September 9, 2015 with a speech in Claremont, New Hampshire.

On the Issues

AAI tracks statements, non-statements, and the track records of each presidential candidate on the issues we care about most. Click on an issue to read what Lawrence Lessig has said on the campaign trail.

Key Advisors

Statements

The U.S. Role in the Middle East

No statements recorded. If you'd like to submit a statement to appear on this website, please email Kristin McCarthy.

U.S. Response to ISIL

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Syria

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Israel/Palestine

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Lebanon

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Iran Nuclear Deal

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Voting Rights

"We must have a system that guarantees a meaningfully equal freedom to vote. To achieve that, we must at a minimum enact the Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2015 and the Voter Empowerment Act of 2015. We should as well add automatic registration, and shift election day to a national holiday." (September 2015, lessig2016.com)

"Equal citizens must have equal representation in Congress. That means, districts must be drawn, and election systems structured, so as to give each citizen as close to equal political influence as possible. FairVote has offered the most comprehensive solution to achieve this equality. At a minimum, the Citizen Equality Act would incorporate their proposed “Ranked Choice Voting Act,” which ends political gerrymandering and creates multi-member districts with ranked choice voting for Congress." (September 2015, lessig2016.com)

Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

No statements recorded. If you'd like to submit a statement to appear on this website, please email Kristin McCarthy.

Surveillance

“Snowden describes agents having the authority to pick and choose who they’re going to be following on the basis of their hunch about what makes sense and what doesn’t make sense. This is the worst of both worlds. We have a technology now that gives them access to everything, but a culture if again it’s true that encourages them to be as wide ranging as they can. The question is — are there protections or controls or counter technologies to make sure that when the government gets access to this information they can’t misuse it in all the ways that, you know, anybody who remembers Nixon believes and fears governments might use? If we don’t have technical measures in place to protect against misuse, this is just a trove of potential misuse…We’ve got to think about the technology as a protector of liberty too. And the government should be implementing technologies to protect our liberties. Because if they don’t, we don’t figure out how to build that protection into the technology, it won’t be there.” (June 2013, Bill Moyers interview)

Community Policing

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Bigoted Speech: Instances of Condemnation and/or Use

*The Arab American Institute is leading a campaign to hold public officials accountable for their bigoted rhetoric this election cycle. Join us by signing our Pledge to Combat Bigotry, and use #NoBigotry on social media to hold candidates accountable and thank candidates who stand against it.*

No statements recorded. If you'd like to submit a statement to appear on this website, please email Kristin McCarthy.

Immigration Reform

No statements recorded. If you'd like to submit a statement to appear on this website, please email Kristin McCarthy.